Super Simple Habanero Pineapple Hot Sauce
I primarily grow my chilis to dry and grind for later usage, as well as tossing a fresh one here and there onto a burger or tacos. Hot sauces aren’t something that have I particularly ventured into making, but I decided to take a crack at it this season. A plethora of red and orange habaneros during one harvest last month provided me the opportunity to dive into the hot sauce realm. Besides, if I screwed up and lost the pods, it wouldn’t be a total loss as it would have been in seasons past.
A bit of research online and the personal tastes of the wife — she isn’t into super crazy hot peppers — steered me in to what turned out to be the right direction. The below recipe is crazy simple, which I prefer, and is easily adaptable to other pepper variants, which I also provide below with my second attempt.
Ingredients
- 6-7 habanero peppers (coarsely chopped)
- 2 cups chopped fresh pineapple
- 2 tsp lime juice
- 1 cup vinegar
- ½ teaspoon salt
![Hot sauce ingredients](/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/hot-sauce-09192017.jpg)
Cooking Directions:
1. Add all ingredients to a food processor or blender and process until smooth. My first batch was very smooth, but for the second I opted to keep it a bit chunkier.
2. Add to a pot and simmer over low heat for roughly 15 minutes.
3. Cool and strain, if desired.
4. Fill bottle or jar and store in refrigerator for later enjoyment.
![homemade hot sauce in bottle](/wp-content/uploads/2017/09/hot-sauce-09192017-2.jpg)
For this particular batch, I also tossed in half a bhut jolokia that I had sitting in the fridge at the time, but I wouldn’t say that it overly impacted the flavor or heat level. For the vinegar I only had apple cider vinegar on hand, instead of the white that I wanted to use. The end result is tasty and fiery, but turned out a bit too vinegary for my personal liking so I made a few adjustments with my next batch.
Aji Lemon Variant
For second batch, I decided to skip the habaneros and blend up 10 Aji Lemon pods — as well as a ghost and a scorpion pod which were on hand — that I had picked earlier in the day. I also went with three (3) cups of pineapple and ¾ of a cup of vinegar. This made for a fuller, chunkier sauce which leaned more toward my preferences.
Uses
While I preferred the Aji Lemon sauce overall, it has a distinct flavor that went better on tacos. The habanero sauce, however, is much more versatile and has been employed on burgers, eggs and just about everything else in between.